Nepalese rescuers have resorted to using explosives to blast into a hillside in an effort to reach more than 600 workers feared trapped in flooded, mud-filled tunnels at hydropower sites along the Trishuli River. The operation, involving Chinese and Nepalese military personnel alongside experts from India, Korea and Australia, is racing against time, with families growing increasingly anxious as hopes of finding survivors alive begin to fade.

The death toll from the wider flood disaster on the Nepal-Tibet border has risen to 939, with 3,925 people still listed as missing, including 592 foreign nationals; roughly one in seven of the missing are believed to be hydropower workers. Prime Minister Balendra Shah said 279 people had been rescued from the affected sites, part of a broader total of 11,379 rescued nationwide, though relatives of the trapped have criticised the pace of the operation. Rescuers have only recently begun pumping air into tunnels and are now digging by hand towards turbine rooms, hampered by destroyed roads that prevent heavy machinery reaching the sites, while downstream in Chitwan makeshift burials are under way for nearly 300 bodies swept down by the floods.